KeyCompass terms and conditions

KeyCompass is a one-person advisory practice operated by Simon Geils, providing self-custody education, onboarding sessions and security reviews from the United Kingdom, remotely.

KeyCompass is a trading name of Simon Geils, a sole trader established in the United Kingdom.

Post
49 Station Road, Polegate, East Sussex, BN26 6EA

Email
hello@keycompass.co.uk or simon@keycompass.co.uk

KeyCompass is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC241780.

In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean KeyCompass. "You" means the person or organisation booking a session or a review.

These terms apply to every engagement between you and KeyCompass. You agree to them when you book and pay for a drop-in hour, or when you accept a written scope and quotation from us and book a time.

Where you are a consumer — an individual booking for purposes outside your trade, business, craft or profession — you have statutory rights that these terms do not affect. Nothing here reduces them. Where a term applies only to consumers, or only to business clients, it says so.

We may change these terms. The version that applies to your engagement is the version published when you booked. The current version and its date are at the foot of this page.

We offer three services.

Drop-in hour. Sixty minutes, live and one-to-one, to answer a short list of questions about self-custody. It does not include a written report.

Private onboarding session. Ninety minutes to a day, live and one-to-one. Choosing and checking a hardware wallet, setting it up from scratch, generating and backing up a recovery phrase, sending a test amount, confirming it arrived, then moving the balance. You perform every step yourself, on your own devices, with each step explained as you go.

Threat and security review. A structured review of a setup you already have, across four failure channels: phishing, device, backup loss, and succession. Nothing is changed during a review. You receive a written, prioritised list of what to fix worst-first, plain-English reasoning for each item, and an explicit list of what is already sound.

Onboarding sessions and reviews begin with a free thirty-minute intake call, at no charge and no obligation. If you do not need the service yet, we will tell you so.

After an onboarding session you receive a written summary within 48 hours covering what was done and what remains outstanding, and one follow-up thread by email for the first month. After a review you receive your written report, usually within a few days, and a follow-up check once you have made the changes.

Sessions run over video call and are not recorded. Screen sharing runs on our side only.

This section is the most important part of these terms.

We are not a custodian. We never take custody, control or possession of your cryptoassets, your private keys, your recovery phrase or your wallet passwords — not at any point, not temporarily, and not to check or assist with something. Your assets stay in your sole control throughout.

We never ask for your recovery phrase, private keys or wallet passwords. Not the words, not a photograph, not part of them. There is no circumstance in which we would need them. Anyone asking you for them — including someone presenting themselves as KeyCompass — is not acting for us.

We are not a financial adviser and we are not regulated. KeyCompass is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Nothing we provide is investment, legal or tax advice, a personal recommendation, or an opinion on what you should buy, sell or hold, or when. Cryptoassets are unregulated and high risk. You could lose all the money you invest. You should take independent professional advice before making investment, legal or tax decisions.

You make every decision and perform every action. Our work is technical and operational: how to hold safely what you already own. We explain, demonstrate and review. You choose, you act, and you remain solely responsible at all times for your keys, your backups, your devices and your funds.

For a drop-in hour, you book and pay online, and the engagement is agreed when payment is taken. For onboarding sessions and reviews:

1. You book the free thirty-minute intake call.
2. On that call we establish which service fits and what it will involve.
3. We send you a written scope and quotation.
4. You accept it in writing and book a time. At that point these terms apply and the engagement is agreed.

Starting prices are published at https://keycompass.co.uk/pricing. Both services are scoped to the setup in front of us: a single wallet with a single backup is the starting price; multiple devices, multisig, or a business setup costs more. You will always have the exact price in writing before you commit to anything.

We may decline an engagement, or stop one, where we judge we cannot carry it out safely, competently or lawfully. If we do that before the work starts, you pay nothing.

You agree to:

• give us accurate and complete information about your setup, so that what we tell you is based on what you actually have;
• have the devices, accounts and materials listed in the prep note ready before the session;
• attend at the time booked, or tell us in advance if you cannot;
• never disclose your recovery phrase, private keys or wallet passwords to us or to anyone else, in any format, for any reason;
• never display a recovery phrase, private key or unlocked wallet on camera or on a shared screen; and
• carry out any steps we recommend yourself, and keep your own records and backups of what you set up.

If the information you give us is inaccurate or incomplete, or you do not have what the prep note asks for, a session may run short or a review may reach the wrong conclusion. We are not responsible for that outcome.

Fees are quoted per engagement, in writing, before you book. The quotation states what is included.

KeyCompass is not currently registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged on our fees. The price you are quoted is the price you pay.

Payment is due in full before the session. A drop-in hour is paid by card when you book. For onboarding sessions and reviews, when you accept the scope and quotation we send an invoice with bank transfer details, and your time is confirmed once payment has been received.

Where you are a business client and payment is late, we may charge interest and recovery costs under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. This does not apply to consumers.

If you are a consumer, you have a statutory right to cancel. Because you book at a distance, you may cancel within 14 days of the engagement being agreed, without giving a reason, and receive a refund.

Sessions are often booked and delivered inside that 14-day window. If you want the work to start before the 14 days are up, you must ask us to begin. We will ask you to confirm this in writing when you book (for a drop-in hour, by ticking a box on the booking form; for other services, when you accept the quotation). Two things follow, and when you confirm you acknowledge both:

• once the service has been fully performed, your right to cancel is gone; and
• if you cancel part-way through, you pay a proportionate amount for what has already been provided.

To cancel, email hello@keycompass.co.uk. You may use the model cancellation form in the Consumer Contracts Regulations, but you do not have to. Refunds are made within 14 days of us being told, by the method you paid with.

Separately from the statutory right above, and without reducing it, our own rescheduling policy is this. You may reschedule once at no charge, provided you give us at least 48 hours' notice. With less than 48 hours' notice, or where an appointment is missed without notice, the session is treated as delivered and the fee remains payable. If we have to reschedule, you choose between a new time and a full refund.

You may use the written summary or review report we produce for you, for your own purposes, indefinitely. That includes showing it to your own advisers, your family or your colleagues.

We keep ownership of what sits underneath it: our methods, templates, checklists and the way we structure a review. You may not republish, resell or distribute our materials publicly, or use them to provide a similar service to others.

A review is a point-in-time assessment. It describes your setup as it stood on the day, on the information you gave us. Setups drift and threats change; a report does not stay accurate by itself.

We treat what we learn about your setup and your circumstances as confidential, and do not disclose it to anyone except where you ask us to, or where the law requires it. We ask the same of you in respect of our materials and methods.

Sessions are not recorded. Screen sharing runs on our side only, so nothing sensitive on your side of the call is transmitted.

We handle your personal information as a data controller, as described in our privacy notice. We never ask for, receive or store your recovery phrase, your private keys or your wallet passwords.

We will provide our services with reasonable care and skill. If you are a consumer, that obligation is also implied by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and nothing in these terms excludes it.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

Subject to that, and because you keep sole control of your keys and funds at all times, we are not responsible for:

• any decision to buy, sell, hold or move a cryptoasset;

• losses arising from actions you take, or do not take, after our work is complete;
• the loss, theft or inaccessibility of cryptoassets, including through a lost or destroyed backup, a forgotten passphrase, or an error made outside a session;
• the value of any cryptoasset, or any market movement;
• failure, defect, discontinuation or compromise of any hardware wallet, software wallet, exchange, network or other third-party product or service, whether or not it was discussed in a session;
• your disclosure of a recovery phrase, private key or password to anyone, however it was obtained; or
• the acts of any person impersonating KeyCompass.

Our sessions and reviews reduce risk. They cannot remove it, and we do not guarantee that following our explanations or recommendations will prevent every loss.

Our total liability is limited to the fees you paid. Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or in connection with an engagement, whether in contract, negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the fees you paid us for that engagement. This limit does not apply to the liabilities in the second paragraph of this section.

If you are a consumer, we are responsible for loss that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill, up to that limit. We are not responsible for loss that is not foreseeable. If our service falls short, you are always entitled to at least a repeat performance or a refund of the price you paid.

If you are a business client, we are also not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of opportunity or loss of goodwill, or for any indirect or consequential loss.

KeyCompass never makes contact first. No cold call, no unexpected email, no message on Telegram, WhatsApp or LinkedIn. We post publicly on LinkedIn, but we never message anyone first. Every conversation starts with you getting in touch.

Only two email addresses are ours: hello@keycompass.co.uk and simon@keycompass.co.uk. Read the address character by character; lookalike domains are cheap.

We will never ask you for a recovery phrase, private key or wallet password, and we will never ask you to move funds to an address we give you. Any message doing either is not from us, whatever it appears to say.

Either of us may end an engagement by telling the other in writing. If you are a consumer, your statutory cancellation right above applies as well, and this section does not reduce it.

We may end an engagement immediately if you ask us to do something unsafe, unlawful or outside what we offer, or if you send us a recovery phrase, private key or password despite these terms.

Ending an engagement does not affect anything already due, or any section of these terms intended to survive it.

If something has gone wrong, email hello@keycompass.co.uk with what happened. We will acknowledge it within two business days and give you a considered response within fourteen days.

If you are a consumer and we cannot resolve it between us, you may be able to use an alternative dispute resolution scheme, or the courts. This does not affect your statutory rights.

These terms, together with the written scope and quotation for your engagement, are the whole agreement between us. Where they conflict, the scope and quotation takes precedence for that engagement.

If we do not insist on something, or delay enforcing it, that does not waive it.

If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

You may not transfer your engagement to someone else without our agreement. Someone who is not a party to these terms has no right to enforce them.

We are an independent practice. Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency or employment relationship between us.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over any dispute.

If you are a consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your own courts, and you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections of the place where you live.

Version 1.1, published 13 October 2026.